Plural Processing in Native Speakers and Learners of English: Challenging the Notion of Strictly Grammatical Plural ProcessingDissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades in der Philologie an der Universität PaderbornGutachter: Prof. Dr. Manfred PienemannProf. Dr. Gisela Hakansson (Lunds universitet) vonMARIE-LOUISE POSCHENgeboren am 8. Mai 1973 in Marburg / Lahn Plural Processing in Native Speakers and Learners of English: Challenging the Notion of Strictly Grammatical Plural Processing “Leven is meervoud van lef” Loesje Acknowledgements This dissertation has been part of my life for many years. A number of people have lived through it with me and have supported me and my work in various stages. For this I would like to thank them. First and foremost I would like to thank Professor Dr. Manfred Pienemann for taking me on as a doctoral student and for his willingness to supervise a dissertation on a topic that proved to be less straightforward than we both might have wished. I owe a debt of gratitude to the large number of pupils, teachers, and British military personnel who provided me with such reliable data. I would also like to thank the teachers and administrators at the King´s School Gütersloh, the Reismann Gymnasium Paderborn, the Gymnasium Delbrück, and the Electronic Unit at the Barker Barracks in Paderborn.

Acknowledgements This dissertation has been part of my life for many years. A number of people have lived through it with me and have supported me and my work in various stages. For this I would like to thank them. First and foremost I would like to thank Professor Dr. Manfred Pienemann for taking me on as a doctoral student and for his willingness to supervise a dissertation on a topic that proved to be less straightforward than we both might have wished. I owe a debt of gratitude to the large number of pupils, teachers, and British military personnel who provided me with such reliable data. I would also like to thank the teachers and administrators at the King´s School Gütersloh, the Reismann Gymnasium Paderborn, the Gymnasium Delbrück, and the Electronic Unit at the Barker Barracks in Paderborn. I will never forget the sight of some 20 soldiers in uniform marching to the computer lab at the University of Paderborn in order to take part in the experiment as part of their exercise drill. The cooperation with all participants and their superiors proved to be the most enjoyable aspect of the entire PhD project. The most influential person involved in the process of my dissertation, and the person who brought colour into my life in Paderborn, was Tanja Ruthenberg, who has been my friend and colleague from the first moment we met. Tanja and I shared many frustrating, important, dull, joyful, and hilarious moments. Indeed, she is the only person who knows what I am like under all of those circumstances. Sharing an office, Tanja and I laughed together, cried together, and supported each other through the crises in our daily lives; and we both grew in the process over the years. Had it not been for Tanja, I might have abandoned this endeavour shortly after having undertaken it. I certainly would have learned less without her, and I definitely would not have had such a good time. And without Tanja, I would never have met my husband! Tanja, I would like to thank you for your friendship and for being the person you are. Thanks a million to Norbert Hagemann who was never too busy or too tired to solve my statistical or formatting problems. Whenever I asked him, he immediately sat down and explained everything patiently. Norbert, you are a great statistician, formatter, and above all a great person! Special thanks must go to my teacher, mentor, and friend Wander Lowie, who was an enormous source of inspiration in the many supervising sessions in Groningen. Wander, you were such a big help with the computer programme E-Prime at a time when I was utterly lost. Your many useful tips helped me strengthen the theoretical part of my dissertation. Thank you too for proofreading those chapters and for taking so much time to help your former student. My sessions with you in Groningen inspired me and filled me with the confidence and conviction I needed to see this project through. They also reminded me of how much fun it could be to work and exchange ideas with others in an academic environment. In this vein I would also like to mention Floor Buschenhenke and Jacqueline van der Poel who contributed so much to those sessions. Jacqueline and Wander, you were excellent hosts: thank you for sharing your culinary delights with me! I would very much like to thank Oliver Scholle, who was an enormous help programming a program to match the frequencies of the stimulus words from the CELEX word list. Without Olli, I would never have been able to test what I set out to test. Thank you, Olli, for selflessly spending so many weeks helping me. I know you also had a lot of things to do. I really appreciate what you did. I would like to thank Vijaya Kohli for being a friend, source of inspiration, source of encouragement, and simply for believing in me. Apart from sharing a love of balcony plants, puppadams, and dawn walks around the Padersee, Viji always showed interest in me and my project, and believed it would be completed. Thank you, Viji, for so many wonderful hours and for giving me the opportunity to return to Paderborn to teach and to use your office. My thanks also to Professor Dr. Günter Rohdenburg for being such a kind spirit with a great sense of humour. Thank you for providing plenty of opportunities to chat and for inviting me to teach in your class. I would also like to thank Anke Lenzing, Jana Roos, and Gabriela Hoffmann for the help you provided. Even though we were not always in the same city, it was heart-warming that we were able to help each other with our dissertations and to create a mutually fruitful study environment. Anke and Gabi, thank you also very much for proofreading the conclusion to my dissertation. I should not forget to thank Helen Snively. You were a really good ‘thesis therapist,’ Helen! Thank you so much for all your editing suggestions, your help, your patience, and your emails. Knowing that someone was reading my emails and following my thoughts actually made the process of completing the conclusion fun. The story of your role in editing helping me put the finishing touches on my thesis has become part of our family history. No future Christmas will pass without raising a glass to you. This dissertation became such an all-consuming part of my life over the years that it was perhaps inevitable that I would share my trials and tribulations with my closest friends. Aly Jellema, Martin de Bruijn, and Ernest Ram are just a few of the friends who had to endure my constant complaining. I even cut a wonderful holiday short because I thought I had to work on my dissertation. What a mistake! I am also indebted to all the friends whom I have not mentioned, those who contributed to the success of my project by word and deed, and those who contributed simply by being there for me. At some point, every one of you heard the excuse that I could not keep in touch because I was so extremely busy with my dissertation. Please accept my apologies. My great-grandma Ruth Köller and my grandma Inge Poschen always showed great interest in my work and supported me in their thoughts. Thank you so much! Grandma Ruth promised to be around to celebrate the completion of my thesis with me. She kept her promise before passing away at the age of 102. I would like to thank my mum and dad for being there and for always supporting me. It was good to know that you always believed in the importance of my dissertation even though you had no idea what it was about. It was also good to know that it was completely irrelevant to you whether I wrote a dissertation or not. You might have been better off had I not researched and written this thing. It was not always very easy, and you were the first to hear. Thank you for the love you keep on giving. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Thomas. You played the decisive role in focusing my attention on completing the dissertation that I had neglected for many years. I cannot thank you enough for helping me close one chapter of my life and open a much more exciting new chapter. And thank you for the role you play in my life. In the end, Alva, Daan, and you made me see the dissertation in its proper perspective: its importance has faded completely compared to what you have given me. Plural Processing: 01 Introduction 1The present study 3Research methodology 4Outline of the thesis in summary 72 Lexical Organisation 9Meaning and form 9Levelt´s model of language production 10Modularity 13The nature of words 15Lexicon and conceptualiser 16d Grammar 19Language development 213 Lexical access 25 Comprehension and Production 27Lexical access models 28 Search model 29Affix-stripping model 30Logogen model 31Cohort model 33Implications for word recognition 344 Number 35The dual number 39 Numerals 42Processing linguistic numerosity 43Plural Processing: 15 Morphological processing 45Inflection versus derivation 46The place of inflections in language representation 48Split morphology hypothesis 50Inflections in learner language 51Different processing accounts 53Processing differences due to formal morphological properties 54Language mode 55Typological differences 56 Regular and irregular inflection 57Evidence from neuroimaging research 59Plural dominants 61 Singulars and plurals in Dutch 62Frequency 646 Methodology 70Experiment I: Lexical decision 70 What is a lexical decision task? 70Robust findings 72Method 75Participants 75 Procedure 78 Apparatus 78Test design 79Experiment II: Phrasal grammatical judgement 87Rationale 87Method 88Participants 88Procedure 89Apparatus 90Test design 907 Experimental findings 94Experiment I: Lexical decision 94Procedure 94Native speakers 95Plural Processing: 2Learners of English 104Overall reaction times 112Experiment II: phrasal grammatical judgement 115Procedure 115Plural-concept noun phrases 115Dual-concept noun phrases 1178 Discussion 120Summing up 120Lexical decision task 123overall reaction times 123nonce words and real words 124Number effect 125Interaction number x absolute dominance 126Interaction number x relative dominance 128Frequency effect 129Phrasal grammatical judgment task 132 The findings interpreted 132General remarks 134Suggestions for further research 134 Concluding remarks 136 Bibliography 139 Appendix A 151 Appendix B 153 Deutsche Zusammenfassung 156Plural Processing: 3